“For me, the 100th anniversary of Virunga National Park is the fruit of resistance. A peaceful resistance led by local activists [and] environmentalists,” says François Kamaté, environmental activist and founder of the local branch of Extinction Rebellion located in Rutshuru, on the edges of the park in Central Africa.

Originally called Parc National Albert, Virunga National Park (PNVi in French) was created on April 21, 1925, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by the royal decree from Belgium, its then-colonizing nation. Virunga was the first national park in Africa. It was initially created to protect wildlife and the environment from human encroachment.

“The idea, at the time, was to keep nature under wraps and avoid any form of human intervention. In other words, no fire, no logging, no intervention on animals, we let nature evolve,” says Jean-Pierre d’Huart, former scientific curator of the Virunga Park and co-editor of a book dedicated to the park’s centenary.

More than just a place for research, the park became — during times of peace — a major tourist attraction in the region, especially due to its population of mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei). Located in the Albertine Rift, on the border with Rwanda and Uganda, Virunga has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. Covering an area of 790,000 hectares (1.95 million acres), the park is renowned for its rich fauna: In addition to mountain gorillas, it is home to endangered wildlife like chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and the extremely rare okapi (Okapia johnstoni). It is also home to Africa’s largest hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) population. Virunga’s mountain ranges include Mount Nyiragongo and Mount Nyamuragira, the two most active volcanoes in Africa.

Originally, the park excluded the local population, many of them reliant on its resources. Most of them were displaced.

“History has shown that this is not enough. Park managers can’t say, ‘Look, we’re here to preserve these habitats and species. Your problems of development, poverty and population density, which are beyond the limit, are none of our business.’ That’s obviously not how it works at all, and the park has become a real lever for development over the past several decades, and brings, thanks to the resources found within the park, means of development and betterment for neighboring communities,” says d’Huart.

In addition to tourism, three hydroelectric power stations were built in 2018 by the Virunga Foundation, which is responsible for park management, creating 20,000 jobs and encouraging the emergence of more businesses around the park.

Still, history shades the parks.

“It is a colonial project. It still has a certain colonial dynamic, like the fact that the leader [of the park] is a Belgian prince [Emmanuel de Merode, director of the park since 2008],” says Bram Verelst, a researcher at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies specializing in conflict dynamics and peace-building in the Great Lakes region in East Africa. “It’s sometimes described as a kind of state within a state, where decision-making and the way it’s run are only partly in the hands of the Congolese government and people. Much of the decision-making also takes place in European spaces.”

Although the park has been under Congolese authority since Congo’s independence in 1960, Belgium continues to maintain an influence on the area. In 2008, a public/private partnership was signed with the Virunga Foundation. The majority of the foundation’s board members are European, including a former Belgian minister of defense.

The park, like the region, experienced a turning point after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when Hutu militias massacred 800,000 people — mainly of the Tutsi ethnic group — over 100 days. At the end of the genocide, nearly a million people took refuge in Goma in the DRC. Although they received humanitarian aid, these refugees depended in part on the park’s resources for their survival. Shortly afterwards, the new Tutsi government in Rwanda joined forces with the armies of Uganda and Burundi, as well as Congolese armed groups, to invade the DRC and overthrow the Mobutu Sese Seko regime, which had been in power since 1965.

Some of the ongoing armed conflicts in eastern DRC are a continuation of the wars that followed — the First and Second Congo Wars (1996-97 and 1998-2002). A large number of armed groups have emerged from this chaos. Among the most famous are the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR in French) and the Mouvement du 23 mars (M23), which recently took control of the area. Indeed, the rebel group now controls key towns around the park, like Rutshuru, Rwindi, Sake and Masisi.

“The park does become somehow a space of insecurity itself because it allows armed groups to survive, to escape military operations,” says Verelst. “This has been the case for the FDLR which had been in the park, in the Rutshuru for years. Now it’s been pushed out by M23, but also the Allied Democratic Forces — the ADF rebellion.”

Verelst says that the park has allowed the ADF, a Ugandan rebel group, to use the massive wilderness “to hide” and “sustain themselves.” In this context of insecurity, the park contributes to certain areas becoming ‘enclaves’, further integrated with neighbouring countries (especially Uganda). This is very clearly the case with Watalinga (the northest enclave), where insecurity from ADF in the park has cut off populations from nearby towns (Beni, Butembo) which encourage the park’s use as an international smuggling zone.

“The park is crossed by trade routes that enable smuggling. You can easily cross the border [DRC and Uganda’s border and/or DRC and Rwanda’s border] with gold in your pocket, it’s very common,” says Verelst. “It can also be corruption, letting trucks through without paying taxes.”

North Kivu, where Virunga lies, abounds in resources, from wood for charcoal to arable land and animals, as well as critical mineral resources like gold, coltan, tin and tantalum.

“In response to the increased violence, the park authorities have trained and armed park guards. This park is in a region of armed conflict, with groups occupying it, looting, stealing, kidnapping, raping and poaching as well. The guards must not be left as they were before, with bows, arrows and spears,” says d’Huart. He says this is not “militarization” of conservation but “professionalism.”

“The fact that the guards are properly supervised, properly equipped and properly paid makes them people who not only protect the park, but also the surrounding population,” d’Huart adds.

For Verelst, the occupation of M23 could, however, mark a new stage in the management of the park.

“It raises interesting questions on conservation governance,” he says. “What will M23 do because they have benefited from certain resources? They presented themselves as an alternative to the Congolese state and they claimed that the FDLR was the one responsible for much of the charcoal business [in the park].”

Verelst says that M23 claims conservation will improve under their leadership, even though, generally, “armed rebellion is the worst thing that can happen for conservation.”

This is a conclusion shared by the park authorities. Since the fall of Goma to the M23, poaching has intensified in the areas it occupies. In addition to armed rangers, park authorities have established a network of 110 community trackers to ensure the protection of wildlife, especially the mountain gorillas. However, the threat to mountain gorillas persists.

In addition to armed groups, the park faces another form of predation — for the oil under its forests. In 2010, a British oil company, Soco International, obtained the rights from the Congolese government to explore for an oil block within the national park. Following international mobilization, however, the project was abandoned in 2014.

But the idea of ​​exploiting hydrocarbons in the area remains.

The DRC government announced in July 2022 that it was auctioning oil and gas exploration blocks, some of which overlap the national park. These auctions are also contested by environmental activists like François Kamate.

“We’ve seen this, for example, with what’s happening in Kongo central province, in the coastal city of Muanda, what Perenco is doing there. Obviously, it doesn’t benefit the local residents,” says Kamate. “On the other hand, it makes their lives increasingly difficult because there are already problems related to environmental destruction.”

The permits did not find buyers. But in a 2024 press release, the minister of hydrocarbons, Aimé Sakombi Molendo, indicated that he would “put in place the mechanism to restart the same procedure immediately.” In addition, neighboring Uganda is currently building two oil platforms, Tilenga and Kingfisher, on the shore of Lake Albert — half of which is located in the DRC, in Virunga. In the event of an oil spill, the entire area could be affected.

Despite these current and future challenges, d’Huart remains positive about the future of the park.

“My sincerest hope is the return of peace and the return of well-being to the people in the Virunga National Park region,” he says. “Today, the park is considering its future through the Virunga Alliance, a management approach that is part of a regional development context where the park is a partner in everything that happens from a human and economic perspective. In short, this approach says: ‘we share this same part of the national territory.’ Let’s work together.”

Banner image: Activists march in the street of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo to demand climate justice and an end to oil exploration in the Virunga National Park. Image by 350.org via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

In DRC, Virunga deforestation escalates as fighting sends refugees into park

Feedback: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.

Credits

Jeremy Hance Editor

Topics

BiodiversityConflictConservationEndangeredEndangered SpeciesEnvironmentNational ParksResource ConflictSocial ConflictViolenceAfricaCentral AfricaDemocratic Republic Of Congo

See Topics